Right, Urban Dictionary defines burlesque like this - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=burlesque and in the description for tonight's show it had promised "the hottest emerging burlesque talent...hosted by the notorious High Tease review.. that will amuse, titillate and invoke the spirit of the festival".
So I'm not expecting Dita Von Teese, Gypsy, Cabaret , Moulin Rougeor Chicago but I'm not thinking we'd get -
- a show that is scheduled to start at 7pm, with doors open at 6.45, but not actually starting til 7.30, with the acts still rehearsing in full view of the audeince.
- an MC with no mike stand - he was OK but doing a bad impersonation of Joel Gray
- one solitary fan dancer (who was OK but nothing special)
- some woman, sitting on the bar in her PJs and a blond Amy Winehouse wig with an effing puppet, miming badly to some old songs
- someone doing that wierd thing where they cover up their top half and make like their belly is their face and doing a "belly dance" - that and the puppet really creeped me out (so much so, that I said "If they bring on a clown, I'm off!")
- a "drunken" cowboy, who so far has been in the dance cage, galloping around, pretending to drink, then starting to strip off, only to reveal a very pale and chubby body,who then stops and falls over "drunk"
- having to move your attention from the MC, to another stage then to the bar, meaning you missed bits as you moved.
- 2 average dancers m/f giving us "the history of dance" from the Victorian age and missing out the Tango and Dirty Dancing and trying to get the audience to hand jive!!!
plus a bar that charges £4 for a bottle of peach cider and sells draught coke that tastes like Panda cola.
What I had expected -
- one or two half-decent strippers/ exotic dancers, male or female (tango, belly dancers)
- male strippers/ dancers to be healthy looking and acting sober
- some signs of rehearsal/ preparation
- comedy to be funny and topical (references to the miners' strike and the Falklands War FFS and a George Formby parody - BC thought he said George Foreman)
- a sense of the risque and some titillation (we were promised some tassle twirling then told it wasn't happening)
OK, it was only £7 but still for about 1 hour of "entertainment" that's pushing it! We left before the end and believe me it wasn't going to get much better. It was like a burlesque evening put on by the Wee Free Church of Scotland and some 1980s feminists! The highlight of the evening for me was, when asked to sit in the other bar while they were still setting up, Gee and BC noticed a pool table and proceeded to do a good impression of The Color of Money
I hope other folks have a better time of it.